FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT WARNING TRACK - PAGE 5

The reconstruction of the playing field at Wrigley Field comes to an end on Saturday after only three weeks and three days. Now if general manager Jim Hendry can find a dependable right fielder that quickly, the Cubs will be in good shape. Near perfect weather in November and a rock solid game plan by White Sox groundskeeper Roger Bossard helped the project come in well ahead of schedule. "As I mentioned when we started this humongous job, there certainly were a lot of concerns and worries, and Mother Nature was one of them," Bossard said.

Well, nobody can say that Mike Marshall didn`t get his swings Friday night. Jack McDowell (13-7), on the way to a 4-0 shutout over the first-place Red Sox, threw 31 of his 154 pitches to Marshall in the Boston first baseman's first three times at bat. And Marshall took rips at 24 of those 31 pitches. He missed seven, fouled off 17 and struck out three times. "He battled me real good, because I was throwing good pitches," said McDowell. "He fouled off good fastballs after some good breakers."

In the countryside, you know autumn has arrived when leaves start changing colors and falling from trees. In baseball, you know seasons have changed when long fly balls start dying on the warning track. As recently as two weeks ago, home runs were showing up on the front page of newspapers and in the first 5 minutes of national newscasts. But now the best baseball teams are fighting for every run. The New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians produced exactly eight hits Saturday in a game that lasted 3 hours 31 minutes.

If Jose Cardenal was still around to eat the ivy off the outfield walls, maybe the Cubs finally would have won a game Wednesday. Then again, probably not. The way things are going these days, something really weird would have happened and the Cubs would have lost anyway. Cardenal was famed in the '70s for munching the ivy off the walls during rain delays. And that was before he got beaned in the head. If he was still around, and had munched just the right spot, Brian McRae could have driven in the game-winning run with a double off the right-center-field wall in the 12th inning to give the Cubs a 4-3 come-from-behind win over the San Francisco Giants.

After battling for eight innings Monday with the smallest of margins, Freddy Garcia wanted to make sure his work was completed. Garcia was at the edge of his dugout seat until Shingo Takatsu struck out Aaron Boone to secure the White Sox's 2-1 victory over Cleveland before 42,461 chilly fans at Jacobs Field. "We will score for him," manager Ozzie Guillen vowed. "Freddy is the type of pitcher who is going to give you what you need to win the game. "Freddy isn't about numbers.

Washington city officials have prepared a new plan they say offers Major League Baseball exactly what it has requested--100 percent public financing for a new ballpark if the Montreal Expos are moved to the nation's capital. "It is by far the best proposal that the city could have come up with," Fred Malek, head of a potential ownership group who has worked closely with the city, said Friday. "It's aggressive. It meets the needs and requests of Major League Baseball. It's got the support of the mayor as well as key members of the city council."

Manager Don Baylor joked before Friday night's game about using right-hander Mark Prior as his designated hitter. He was joking, right? "I thought about it when I was writing out the lineup," Baylor said. "I'd imagine Prior would like to hit. But I can't go that far." As it turned out, Baylor didn't need him to pick up a bat. The 21-year-old rookie did enough with his golden right arm. Prior threw seven shutout innings to lead the Cubs to a 2-0 victory. A sellout crowd of 46,083 flocked to Safeco Field to witness the Cubs' first game in Seattle.

Sammy Sosa's first official bunny hop of 2003 turned out to be a false alarm Wednesday night at Shea Stadium, keeping him one home run shy of the 500 mark. When Sosa crunched a 1-1 fastball in the sixth inning of the Cubs' 4-1 loss to the Mets, most thought they were witnessing a historic moment. The crowd of 20,594 roared as the ball arched toward the left-field wall, ignoring the fact that it would have been a game-tying three-run home run if it had cleared the fence. Sosa began clapping on his way toward first, but a stiff incoming wind kept the ball in play and Sosa was left with a loud fly ball that Cliff Floyd caught one step onto the warning track.

The Terry Bevington era began Friday night with an extra-inning battle between the White Sox and Detroit Tigers at Comiskey Park. Bevington, who spent the last seven years as a White Sox coach, was named manager Friday after the club fired Gene Lamont because of the team's dismal 11-20 start. The White Sox lost a chance to win it 4-3 in the last of the ninth when center-fielder Chad Curtis caught Craig Grebeck's short bases-loaded fly and threw out Tim Raines at the plate to complete an inning-ending double play.

The Terry Bevington Era began in spectacular post-midnight fashion in Comiskey Park Friday night and Saturday morning when Mike LaValliere and Ozzie Guillen drove home the tying and winning runs in a 15-inning, 5-4 victory over the Detroit Tigers. The game lasted 4 hours and 58 minutes and used 13 pitchers, six for the home team. Bevington had been named manager earlier in the day, succeeding the fired Gene Lamont. "What did we play, 15 innings?" Bevington asked. "A good game.